Skyscript Astrology Forum

Due to precession, the apparent positions of the celestial bodies change with time. The Sun crosses the Equator each year at a slightly different place and the tropical zodiac advances of 50.256" each year.

But the individual birth chart is set once and for all and should not be moved. If we do not compensate for the precession, it is like setting up the birth chart of one born in 1950 with the zodiac of 2000, for instance. This does not seem right to me.

In his book, "Solar Transits", Robert Hand says that precession should be compensated for when ascertaining the exact time of transits.

As regards, relocation, I think it is better to relocate, but I am not convinced that you can change your prospects by moving just the day of the anniversary. The correct place is the place you live all year round.

Martin wrote:

but with regard to Gustav II Adolf (Gustavus Adolphus), it should be noted that there were several birth times in circulation for him (nothing new under the sun!), although they all (?) give him a Sagittarius ascendant. Morin claimed to have predicted the king's death (by primary directions) but that his timing had been off due to an imprecise birth time ...

Morin supposedly used Cardan's 100 Notable Nativities or a book by that name or something like it that Cardan used. He doesn't say anything about rectification in Book 23, but it would not surprise me to learn that he did. Although I did check and the record indicates the King was at the places Morin said he was at the time of his returns, the charts he gives work a bit too well. If Morin's birth time is accurate the solar return for the King in the year of his death is as precise as anyone will ever see.

The lunar return is another story. First Morin cast the chart for the Moon exactly one degree less than the natal Moon, presumably by mistake, and the tables he used were notoriously inaccurate, although that fact was unknown to him. The result is that the actual lunar return is off by an hour.

He mentions in Book 23, the primary direction that indicates the Kings death, I think it was Mars to the square of a nasty natal Mars, but I'd have to check. he goes into more detail on the direction in book 25.

In both cases, solar and lunar return, the planets are placed with relative accuracy (except the Moon for the reasons stated above), but the angles are off from what a modern computer would give. However the placement of the return planets on the natal planets is eerily prescient of the King's death. Not satisfied with producing a set of returns with pinpoint accuracy, Morin further gilds the Lilly by claiming the King died at the time the transiting Sun (lord 8 in the nativity) triggers the solar and lunar return, not only by longitude, but by primary motion. Alas for Morin, the historical record puts the King's death hours later than Morin said he died. One must approach Morin's timing claims with a grain of salt and study him for his methods and less for some of the spectacular, albeit dubious, results he obtains.

Kirk wrote:

Learning about profections also convinced me to stick with the birth location.

This is actually a different technique than Morin would use and one that Abu Mashar and others recommend. Since there is nothing in nature to correspond to profections, Morin would reject their use, not to mention they were a product of the Arabs whom he disliked (to put it mildly). The little bit I know about using profections with solar returns indicates to me that it is more "natural" to used them with the birth location.

The biggest problem I've encountered with using the location at the time of the return is that we don't know where the native will be in the future. This is a predictive technique. How can we predict if we can't cast the chart? My SR Group was scrambling during the Presidential election trying to figure out where the candidates would be during their solar and lunar returns. Since candidates hop around so much even in one day, there was the problem of figuring out where they were at a particular time of day and what do we do if they were in an airplane hours from landing at the time of a lunar return? In cases like that it was felt a default to the birth location was in order.

Tom

Tom wrote:Morin supposedly used Cardan's 100 Notable Nativities or a book by that name or something like it that Cardan used. He doesn't say anything about rectification in Book 23, but it would not surprise me to learn that he did.

You will find it in Book 17, pp. 57-58 of Holden's translation. He claims it was a matter of only five minutes, so still fairly impressive.

He mentions in Book 23, the primary direction that indicates the Kings death, I think it was Mars to the square of a nasty natal Mars, but I'd have to check. he goes into more detail on the direction in book 25.

It was the natal squares of Saturn (in the 8th, squared by Mars) and Jupiter (exaltation ruler of the 8th) coming to the midheaven, immediately followed by the body of Mars itself.

Andrew wrote:I think Volguine recommended precession.

Hello Andrew,

The truth is, Volguine used relocation (at the precise minute of the Solar return time, not the ?residence? area, as Penfield uses), without precession (in fact, Volguine reported that Junctinus calculated his charts "the same way we do", although others say Junctinus used precession, but that is another story). And he allowed Maurice H. Froger to write a chapter, as appendix, where he advocates precession for both the solar return and lunar return, where the latter was casted upon the solar return Moon's position, which he called "menses" ("Mensales" in French)...

This is my today's post from actastrology forum:

Very interesting text I found in Speculum Astrologiae of Francesco Giuntini(Lyons, 1586), page 1012:

http://fondosdigitales.us.es/fondos/lib ... trologiae/

Here is a free translation:
As far as many astrologers are concerned, in order to use correctly the oservations of Ptolemy , in their astrological predictions they calculate the planets according to the eighth shere. The true location of the Sun is to be found in the emphemeries.
Then, from the position of the Sun in the emphemeries the movement of the precession should be extracted and this way we get the true location of the Sun, which can not be got from the emphemeries.
From the planets we should also extract the precession and so we get the true location of the planets to the fixed stars. This method best meets my practice.

This text could not be found in the french translation of Giuintini(Junctin de Florence, Traite des revolutions solaires, Nice, 1962)

Hello Dimitry,

This text of Junctinus is obviously important. However according to a translation of such a text from Pepita Sanchis, there is some subtility that has to be taken care of. For instance, the calculation has to be made from "the first star of Aries" (possibly Mesarthim, but I am not sure). Etc. Now, when Junctinus gives an example, in the chapter XIII of the Second part, he don't use precession (at, least as we do).

Any way, here is the Latin text you may have used, and which I refer to:

?...Deinde praecessio equinoctii verni apparens hinc est subducenda,
remanet locus Solis verus a prima Arietis stella numeratus, & non ab
intersectionis puncto vernali...?

astroart wrote:Here is a free translation:
As far as many astrologers are concerned, in order to use correctly the oservations of Ptolemy , in their astrological predictions they calculate the planets according to the eighth shere. The true location of the Sun is to be found in the emphemeries.
Then, from the position of the Sun in the emphemeries the movement of the precession should be extracted and this way we get the true location of the Sun, which can not be got from the emphemeries.
From the planets we should also extract the precession and so we get the true location of the planets to the fixed stars. This method best meets my practice.

Hi Astroart.
This looks interesting but a few things in your translations aren't yet clear to me. First "in their astrological predictions they calculate the planets according to the eighth shere. The true location of the Sun is to be found in the emphemeries." It seems here that the positions in relation to the fixed stars is meant (the 8th sphere), thus sidereal ephemerides.
Do you or Fran?ois know what ephemerides Giuntini used?

carriere.francois wrote:For instance, the calculation has to be made from "the first star of Aries" (possibly Mesarthim, but I am not sure).

It seems that the Alfonsine Tables were originally sidereal with some added formulas to calculate trepidation (the theory of the backwards and forwards motion of the equinox) instead of precession. The 0?Aries point used was Zeta Piscium or Revati from the Indian astrologers. (see the astrodienst link below). This coincided with the equinox in ca. 560-570 AD. Its use therefore unites Indian, Persian and thus some western Medieval astrologers.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004JHA....35..479S p. 481.
http://books.google.nl/books?id=RupA3n3 ... t&resnum=2 p218.
http://www.astro.com/swisseph/swisseph. ... c226863952

Back to the translated text; the second part confuses me "Then, from the position of the Sun in the emphemeries the movement of the precession should be extracted and this way we get the true location of the Sun, which can not be got from the emphemeries."

Here the "true location" is mentioned again. It seems that in the first part a sidereal position is mentioned (as the correct one), which is to be found in the ephemeris. Then in the second part it is said that the ephemeris position isn't the correct one but has to be corrected (from tropical (in the ephemeris) to sidereal?).

The Harvard article I mentioned above mentions the Parisian tables which were tropical. So perhaps till Giuntini's days perhaps there were two kinds of ephemerides in use? I don't know.

Hi everyone,

Today I will intend to give you more detailed answer.
1. I am not the first one who discovered that Junctin was the one who recommended the use of precession for the calculation of the horoscope.
An information about this I originally found in the book of Eric Weil " Astrlogie: la practique de la pr?vision", Lyon 1995, p.92. Below comes the original text without translation as it is easy to understand:

" Denis Labour? nous a communiqu? que tout r?cement (d?cembre 1994), un groupe d? astrologues anglais travaillant sur les textes anciens s?est rendu compte que, dans le premier chapitre de son Trait? des r?volutions solaires (XVI si?cle), Junctin de Florence tient affectivement compte de la precession des equinoxes dans le calcul du moment du retour solaire.Ce chapitre n?a pas ?t? mis ? la disposition des astrologues contemporains dans la traduction par Hi?roz en 1960 pour Les Cahiers astrologiques."

I suppose that the English astrologers' Group, translating from Latin and mentioned from Eric Weil, is the circle of Graeme Tobyn. The reason why I think so, is the information published in the "Astrological Journal" , January/February 1997. Below comes the quotes:

"Graeme Tobyn, medical herbalist and astrologer, provided the Latin translations during Olivia Barclay's lecture in Exeter. He heads the London Translation Group, which meets one Friday per month from October to June at the Warburg Institute, Bloomsbury. The group is currently studying a Latin translation of the 8th Century text " On Reception", Masha'allah. Space exists for people with some knowledge of Latin to join this group..."

In my previous post I specified the text's page with free translation of it.

An now comes the English translation of the discussed part of Latin text:

" Inquirendus est locus Solis verus, qui ad diem completum ex Ephemeridibus excerpitur: deinde praecessio aequinoctij verni apparens hinc est subducenda, ita remanet locus Solis verus ? prima Arietis stella numeratus, &non ab intersectionis puncto vernali...."

"You should search for the true location of the Sun, which is to be extracted from the past days from the Ephemeries: from there the precession of the vernal equinox which appears, from this place is to be subtracted, and what remains is the true location of the Sun, measured from the first star of Aries, and not from the intersection of the vernal point."

I think, Junctin is easy to understand: he recommends to take the Sun's position from the Ephemeries, which are tropical, and from this position of the Sun the precession to be subtracted. The result is the sidereal position of the Sun. The same has to be done for the other planets.

Mss Francois Carriere is right. In the chapter XIII Junctin gives an example in which gives tropical positions of the Sun and the planets in the radix as well as in the solar horoscope. Here comes the original text:

http://fondosdigitales.us.es/fondos/lib ... trologiae/

As we can see from the text, the longitudes of the Sun in the radix and in Solar horoscope have the same values, which means that in this example Junctin haven't used precessed solar return.

Everyone can recalculate the example horoscope of Juctin by a modern software and will make sure that Junctin gives tropical longitudes- in the radix as well as in the solar.

But what ephemeries Junctin had used? Here is the answer of the Eddy's question:

Regiomontanus had published in 1474 the ephemeris for the years 1474-1506. These were the first european ephemeris. The Alfonsine Tables are not ephemeris in the modern meaning of this word, they are rather "zij" or arabic astronomical tables.
Johann Stoeffler had published ephemeris for the years 1499-1532.
Luca Gaurico had published in 1533 ephemeries for the years 1534-1551.
Johann Stadius had published in 1581 ephemeris for the 1554-1606.

The birth date in the Junctin's example horoscope is 18 July 1523, 17h18m
post meridiem. I think for this horoscope Junctin had used the ephemeris of Johann Stoeffler. Here you have a link to these ephemeris for July 1523:

http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db ... &seite=783

Everyone can recalculate the Suns' and other planets' positions for the mentioned date.

In his book Junctin had given 400 example horoscopes. As Junctin hadn't given any information in the horoscope mentioned above, such as birth name and birth latitude, I supposed that Junctin had published this horoscope in other place of the book. And B I N G O!!!!! I have found this horoscope on the p. 966:

http://fondosdigitales.us.es/fondos/lib ... trologiae/

Here Junctin had given more information about the native.About the horoscope he had written:
"Cuiusdam Medici Nativitas" which means : "Radix horoscope of someone Medici"
In the beginning of the horoscope interpretation Junctin had written:
"Tria breuiter in hac tua genitura, Magnifice Francisce, faciam" which means: "Shortly, with this[description] your geniture, Your Hollyness Francisco, I will make it."
So, first of all, we understand that he is someone from the Medici's family, and secondly, that the native is born in Florence.

From the book of Wilchelm Knappich "Geschichte der Astrologie", Frankfurt 1967, p.236 we got to know that Junctin had been a educator of the Catherine de' Medici's sons, and as well as Nostradamus, had made predictions about her sons.

These historical facts confirm our example horoscope.

Thanks for the fascinating material Astroart, great research .

Unfortunately I can't read Latin but I looked at the charts to try to find out what he used as "0? Aries". In the 1523 chart example to get the sidereal positions he subtracts 27?19'. I don't know what people of those days believed the rate of precession was but a few centuries before it was believed to be 1? in 66.6 years and according to some with the 0? Aries beginning point near Zeta Piscium.

If we calculate for the now known rate of precession of ca. 1? in 72 years
then 27?19 would give a 0? Aries date about the year 450 BCE. Now this would be at ca. 3? ? 4? Taurus (tropical). This comes close to the star mentioned by Fran?ois; Mesarthim http://www.constellationsofwords.com/st ... rthim.html

In a work of Astrodienst (which due to some computer language 'things', unfortunately is hard to read) the history of several starting points is discussed. All are at about 20? (Zeta Pisium, and according to Astrodienst used by Hipparchus, the Persians in the 6th century, the Toledan tables and Copernicus) to 24? (Spica) (according to the year 2000) so Mesarthim still is far from those values. Perhaps this one was introduced by other Arabic sources. It's quite a logic choice because Mesarthim is easier visible than Zeta Piscium and the point is there the 0?point (for Spica one has to subtract 180?).

Not only should you precession correct your solar returns, you should do the same to your transits! After all. that vernal point is moving backwards all the while so you have to add that precession amount to your transits to get a real "hit".

Don't just take my word for it, try it out. With PC transits come alive.

I read earlier on this thread that 2 Taurus is 2 Taurus, I suppose it is but that 2 Taurus is moving backwards, is it not?

Curtis

I recently heard a talk on Solar Returns by the English astrologer Bernard Eccles.

One suggestion he made which I found quite thought provoking was why just do a return chart in terms of the ecliptical longitude? What about a chart when the Sun reaches the same declination as in the natal chart? I dont know if this idea has any traditional pedigree or not but it seems quite intriguing.